Aggregate Index Theory, Gold’s Direction

The Dow Futures, when I checked earlier, were up a fraction of a point. It reminded me I should at least mention one aspect of our ChartPack work over on our www.peoplenomics.com subscriber side.

You see, whether you are a big whale of an investor, or just a little small-fry with nothing other than a small pension plan investment to manage, there is much to be learned from watching the market at least once per week. Generally, the time to do that is on Friday and hour or two ahead of the market close.

The reason?

There is a lot of “hot money” sloshing around the world, but a non-trivial amount goes “off the table” over weekends. I mean, logical when you think about it; who wants to be in a position for two-days when there is nothing you can do about your position. Imagine the havoc in the markets if (and these are not predictions, only illustrations) if Hillary took a great fall, or Donald Trump did something out of character, or that Russian fleet happens to run out of fuel off North Africa and turned toward other than their expected destination at Tartus in Syria. Or, imagine they started launch cruise missiles to speed along the Syrian conflict….

That’s some of the painfully learned logic of my personal trading approach. Oh, sure, you can buy the Dow, but that’s only 30 stocks and if you’re with the Presidential Working Group on Markets and you’re working stable markets until the election, the Dow is a pretty thin place to be. Buying bushel-baskets of options (long or short, depending on desired results) can move the Dow.

But take a broader index like the S&P 500. Moving that broad a slice of financial assets becomes non-trivial.

So as we head into the last day of trading for the week, ahead of our Peoplenomics analysis which wraps up a lot of numbers into a model to arrive as a simple Long, Cash or short decision, I’d just point out that the S&P 500 closed yesterday at 2,133.04.

This matters because you can click over to Yahoo Finance here, nudge the Historical Data tab, and see that last Friday’s close on the S&P shows 2.141.16.

Even if the Futures (*which we check from FinViz here) are showing +3.50 (at least earlier), that still suggests that major breaking news aside, the close today ought to be around 2,136.50. And that, on a broad basis, is how the markets have rolled this week.

Now, if you’re an investor who is serious about making a little dough, you can take this to all kinds and analytical detail, but the process is pretty simple.

Oh, and also best applied after 1:30 PM Central time because around there the European money comes off the table as those markets shut down ahead of ours. It is then – through the opening Sunday evening of the Asian markets again – that we have a weekly pause as investors pick out belly-button lint and try to figure where the herd is going next week.

If you have telephone transfer control over your pension plan allocations, you can go through this exercise weekly as well. But when it comes to one typical choices like a Treasury (or bond) choice, you need to pick the right data to look at. I’d suggest the CBOE 10-Year Treasury Note (symbol ^TNX) and go through the same exercise.

From these two items we can infer that the odds makers believe on the Bond side that either Hillary will win and with her will come additional inflation, or that the Fed could pull off a November surprise and raise rates as the FOMC meets next week. Either way, bond yields are going up, which means bondholder assets are going down. So if I were managing a pension account of my own, I’d probably be in money-markets/cash with the account until we get a sense of things after the election.

THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE, just a discussion of how to set about making informed decision. It’s your future, so play it carefully. But you may wish to remember Ure’ saying: “He who sells and runs away, has some cash another day.”

We hate not having a pretty solid sense of what’s coming although sometimes in markets, just like casinos when the luck isn’t running, the safest place for your money is in cash or money-markets. You might miss the first part of the next big move, but the search for that is what we chase after over at Peoplenomics.com.

Gold & Silver Directional Theory

From this, we might infer that physical assets aren’t all dead yet. And to convince ourselves, we click over to the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and see it was 16.73 yesterday and 16.65 a week ago.

This will drift around, but from this we can also compare the gold increase for the week (0.1389%) versus the increase in silver (0.4894%) and make the conclusion that silver (*using our proxy trading vehicles as comparative pricing tools, not going to the physical data at Kitco.com) is showing a bit more comparative strength.

From this we can infer that rate-sensitive assets are worried about future inflation. And judging by how the Federal Reserve has been orchestrating the huge increases in M1 (the cash and short term deposits in Money Supply data), we assume the markets are “dumb” at all.

At some level, they tell us the future. And that future is simply this: As soon as the election is over, we look for rates to rise (if it doesn’t happen next week). When it does, there is a huge amount of back pressure to blast inflation much more than a single 1% rise, although I think it was Goldman figured out (or one of their analysts did) that a 1% rise in bonds would result in $1-trillion in bond losses, which would leave money nowhere else to hide except in equities (stocks) which are somewhat adjusted to inflation through their pricing.

Put another way: Could be that the reason stocks are going up, and not the groceries (at least so much) is simply because stock prices may be forecasting a great big bump in inflation.

At first, that will look like a stock bubble. But then it will look like an imploding economy if it “runs away” with people’s purchasing power.

Press Releases du Jour

Being sick of politics, as I’m sure you are by now, we turn to financial news items with GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis out first:

“Real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the third quarter of 2016 (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 1.4 percent.

The Bureau emphasized that the third-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see “Source Data for the Advance Estimate” on page 3). The “second” estimate for the third quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on November 29, 2016.”

If you are looking for “the number” it may be found in the tables over here and it shows an annual run-rate of GDP for Q3 at $18.6512=Trillion. ($18,651,200,000,000)

Just for giggles, the Federal Debt to the Penny this morning is $19,795,497,461,281.62.

Dividing GDP run rate into Debt to the Penny we infer that America owes 6.1352% more than we make in a year.

Happy Greece time is coming which may explains hard assets firming, you think?

Then there is the Employment Cost Index from the Department of Labor:

“Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, for the 3-month period ending in September 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries (which make up about 70 percent of compensation costs) increased 0.5 percent, and benefits (which make up the remaining 30 percent of compensation) increased 0.7 percent.“

15 Comments

Don_in_Odesa on October 29, 2016 at 06:24

“Subscribe damnit” ???

As you know I stopped my subscription, I think it was back in ’09 when the bottom of my business fell out. My financial picture has improved since then and I have been tempted to resubscribe. I actually succumbed last week and started to add some money to the PayPal account I opened for the sole purpose of subscribing to your Peoplenomics all those years ago. I haven’t used it since. Then I got to thinking about the reason I don’t use it. I ain’t rich! Too much theft of online accounts about. I use a credit/debit card on Amazon. I have zeroliability if it gets hacked.The other choice is sending you a check. Truth be told I’m just to “damned” lazy and insecure to be sending a check through the mail. Start taking credit cards and I will “re-up.”

George Ure on October 29, 2016 at 09:14

I appreciate the comment. I will look into it but one of the problems I’m trying to avoid is not having anyone’s credit card information. Will look for a third-party processor…

Kevin on November 3, 2016 at 08:04

George,

You may try a company called Stripe for this. My dad uses it on his website. Something you can look into to see if it fits your needs.

Jim in MO. on October 28, 2016 at 16:30

Down to El Rancho de Chaos for an extended weekend and participating in the MARS exercise. Had problems with the hotspot last week that should be fixed now. Cant miss the Saturday report.

Daniel Rose on October 28, 2016 at 15:00

Did you see the how the DOW ended the day? Flat with 3 little peaks. What’s with that? Is that code for something? Talk about controlled.

This is a GREAT site and public service. Send it to everyone you know.

Younge on October 28, 2016 at 12:26

I did the Lord’s work yesterday

and voted for trump. We have

good and bad witches which

might HRC might be?

Wavecrave on October 28, 2016 at 15:54

No doubt that the Lord chooses Trump over Clinton. You’re 100% correct! Don’t you think we should get biblical and burn the witch?

George Ure on October 29, 2016 at 06:01

give her a fair trial first and then…;/;.

annonymous on October 28, 2016 at 09:47

George I have a serious question for a change of pace. Like the economy. the feds are printing money to cover debt that they don’t have resources to pay for. in a lot of ways it is like kiting a check.

back in the past when a check was written here or there it had a three to seven day wait before it hit your home bank. today it is instant. Ok now my question. The federal reserve is kiting the dollar. QE whatever they are printing to cover debt that is outstanding with paper that isn’t covered by anything at all. as long as its moving they can handle it till it gets to a level that its coming back faster than they can print it. What would happen if everyone holding these pre printed cash brought them back to the bank?

My nightmare happened in 85 I was paying bills on a future paycheck that was three days out. everyone cashed deposited their checks. by the time the ping pong balls quit bouncing it cost me five times the money and almost three months worth of pay to stop it.. thank god I had a great employer that was willing to bail me out because in his younger years he had experienced a similar situation.

dan on October 28, 2016 at 09:19

All the liars have hilldabeast in the lead….one can never believe the liars….imho

Wavecrave on October 29, 2016 at 13:12

The LA Times/USC poll has Trump up by 2. Are they liars too? IMHO it’s not a good survival mechanism to only accept information which supports your opinion.

Austin on October 30, 2016 at 17:40

Oh, and our choice is 91 percent of the MSM in the bag for Hillary as PROVEN by the wiki leaks revelations?